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The Homey Community has been moved to https://community.athom.com.
This forum is now read-only for archive purposes.
Usable speech recognition
LeonSchuurbiers
Member
I've been using my homey for about a month now, mostly just to control the lights in the house. And while it's great when it works, most of the time it fails.
I've created a flow to talk back what it hears, and if I make sure there is no background, stand at max 2 meter distance, and articulate very well:
- 50% it recognizes the right words
- 40% it's close (and I think the system should recognize similar words; if I configure "livingroom on' and it recognizes 'livingstone on' (just an example, I'm using Dutch speech) it should still activate the flow without me configuring all the different ways Homey can almost-recognize the speech
- 10% it just spins and nothing happens.
Now as soon as I am around the corner, more than 3 meters away, or the cat decides to walk by, in the percentages are 10 / 10 / 80. Which just isn't usable.
I have no experience with the competition (Google / Amazon), but I assume they are performing better?
What are the plans to improve this?
I've created a flow to talk back what it hears, and if I make sure there is no background, stand at max 2 meter distance, and articulate very well:
- 50% it recognizes the right words
- 40% it's close (and I think the system should recognize similar words; if I configure "livingroom on' and it recognizes 'livingstone on' (just an example, I'm using Dutch speech) it should still activate the flow without me configuring all the different ways Homey can almost-recognize the speech
- 10% it just spins and nothing happens.
Now as soon as I am around the corner, more than 3 meters away, or the cat decides to walk by, in the percentages are 10 / 10 / 80. Which just isn't usable.
I have no experience with the competition (Google / Amazon), but I assume they are performing better?
What are the plans to improve this?
Comments
I am planning to make review video. Could you also make a video otherwise we are regularly slapped by the enhusiast: `It works for me why are you complaining`?
I can confirm that both Alexa and Google works as advertised (English).
Here is what Homey understood when I asked it to switch the office light off.
Lol
I cleaned up some of the apps I just tested and not really needed and loadavg dropped quite some. It looks like the speech recognition is behaving better now.
It is just a suggestion..... but it never hurts to try
When im 2 meters > away from Homey i barely see the feedback led respondig to the sound of my voice. I would like to have the ability to adjust the volume/sensitivity of the mic, but dont know if its technically possible for the noise cancellation..
@Mathijs That is a good one, the engine used the urban dictionary.
Now clearly I got no idea how these things work behind the scenes. I just know that the videos Athom has online about this show a idea that I am unable to recreate. And that high end voice recognition in serious volume without any cost just does not exist. Again, I honestly would prefer an honest sorry, 'won't happen', over the silence we have now. It would mean I can move my Homey from my desk to a place where connections are better.
Right now my Homey is like a deaf device next to my $50 Echo. That one is magical in recognizing voice. I do understand Athom and Amazon have different resources and I back Athom with the two Homeys I got. I just ask for some information on what to expect.
Pricing Table
61+ - 1 million minutes $0.006 / 15 seconds*
Well if homey would not go through the Athom servers but connect directly to Google than would be within that 60 minutes. I think google is the best bet because of the wide ranges of microphone types supported, works in noisy environment, supports many languages and accents, reliable and fast service.
I believe Amazon`s service is also accessible for other devices. But that depends a lot on microphone tuning.
Ivona text to voice is not a free service either. But man that works! The best quality I have ever seen.
Probably they have done a special deal but Ivona cost around $30-45/voice. Their cloud service (that is not used by Homey just for comparison): $1000/month (prepaid) + $0.003/unit for usage above 250k units/month.
Ps: I haven`t realized till now that Ivona is an Amazon company.
The problem is not the speech recognition service they use, it's the hardware (or lack of software optimization of the hardware (read: microphones))
Whether you use your phone or Homey itself, the same recognition service is used.
And if you use your phone, speech is recognized much much better then with Homey.
msmits said: I think this proves my point. I see exactly the same behaviour.
Homey just doesn't hear you when you're 'too far' away.
The problem with this example is that the recognition software tries to make a logical sentence from your speech.
When you use very short commands, it fails at doing this lots of times.
Try saying 'Doe de lamp van Sam aan'. That will probably work better.
Fact is that this needs to be addressed by @Athom very soon because they are talking about going retail ( in their newsletter) now.
I agree to you all. Athom should respond on this, but i see for a while now that Athom does not respond that much on the forum. Also the new newsletter contains not that much news for us. It looks more like an advertisement of how good they are, nothing mentioned about the big problems they have and sollutions they have in mind or time table.
Athom did have a communication problem since the start. @emile did admit that and promised to do better, and they did a little bit for a while. Writing a weekly software status, but now i only see the same behaviour: don't tell, don't respond, don't mention, only "working hard on it". That is not enough for us people who are spending hours weekly in order to get homey working. If they don't want to sent that kind of information it to the normal user (if they have some), they could write a newsletter to the forum users, or they could write weekly a status report of the 10 biggest issues they have and about the progress. Not pointing to github or slack, just mention the biggest problems they have and their status like:
-433 range BAD (know the problem, working on sollution, estimated release week 40)
-Speech recognition (problem not known, could be hardware, Currently no sollution available)
-Slow speech (etc)
I also would like to hear the truth from them. Are they able to fix it? I It is hardware and if so are they working on homey v2.0 who can really do as promised? And if so, do we all get that for reduced price for all our testing effort? And use the homey v1 for in our bedroom, from where the distance is so short , it does recognise our speech.
I know they work hard and have a potential beautiful product, but right now too much works too unstable. And they seem to focus on too many things.
And what is the status about the financial situation of Athom and what about the current sellings of homeys? Do they have enough money to keep developing, or should we be afraid that they run out of momey. But i hardly can expect a honest response on that one :-)
I really like the homey and are willing to give more of my time to test it, but they should start communicate better and be more transparent.
They start delivering the orders form there web-store in couple of days.
Also they are make them become ready to go for selling Homey in the shops.
Sad because of the feeling that don't listen to us here although they write there love the community.
Afraid that selling Homey for real, the refunds with the extra cost becomes the begin of the and of Athom.
The two things that for me counted to became first batcher where: Speech and better KaKu handeling.
We know where we stand in this.
I had contact with Athom about this, they said it can be caused by my voice. Quote: For "some" voices it's difficult for Homey to recognize. But when my gf talks to Homey it's exact the same....
They also told me that they're still working on the voice recognition, and the system is "self learning", so the more people talks to Homey, the better it gets.
Now i've running a flow which mutes the tv when Homey is listening.. it's a little bit better, but still not acceptable in my opinion.
I agree with you.
I hope that @emile or @JeroenVollenbrock or @annemarie or someone else from @Athom ;
will respond on our concerns and give us more inside information about the current situation.
Ik hope they respond very soon
e.g. the phone's speech recognition software is used, e.g. Google or Siri
that's why it's a) better and b) faster
Personally I gave up on speech recognition & spoken replies through homey,
because it works so bad the WAF of the homey is also very low (to a point where she said " I'm going to throw that paperweight out")
One workaround I can think of is to use Tasker + Autovoice to trigger a HomeyFlow
But that kind of defeats the purpose of Homey..
Now that is VERY scary. It means that indeed the problem is hardware and that makes a fix nearly impossible.
Let's hope that at the meeting this month the developers can show that Voice Recognition does work for them, if it does not work for them I think we bought a defective device and should be repaired. Happens all the time, not a big deal and I'm not worried. I am sure Athom will make it work as they advertised it. It they are able to throw in spotify....
The fact they do not respond at all however is not a good sign.
It means that they have problems with their echo-cancellation and noise-removal, and not with the speech recognition. Homey's mic is on par if not better than most phone's. The problem is that you're not 10-20cm away from Homey's microphone.
And it has 2 high quality (according to Athom